
Brad Jones Racing's Nick Percat is looking forward to the thrill of hunting his rivals at this weekend's Supercars series season opener at Bathurst.
The teams will compete in two 250-kilometre races over the weekend, which gives the racing a very different dynamic from the usual 1000-kilometre endurance race held there in October each year.
"You won't be playing the long game like we do at the 1000," Percat said.
"There will be no 'just cruising around behind someone for 10 or 15 laps to save fuel and I'll pass them later in day'.
"It will be a lot more living for the moment and taking ground wherever you can.
"There will be a lot more attacking and making track position right there and then, so it will be different for sure.
"A lot us say that best part of the 1000 is the last two hours because you go into qualifying mode and attack, and that's what this weekend will be like from lap one - so it's going to be a lot of fun."
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Coming off his best season where he finished seventh, Percat and BJR have spent the summer working on where they can make improvements to push into the top five and beyond.
It has been a long off-season due to a COVID-shortened 2020 campaign that finished at Bathurst in early October, and that will create some challenges according to Percat.
"Doing two 250-kilometre races will be tough physically for all the drivers," he said.
"It was the same when we used to go to Adelaide for the first race, you're just not 'match fit', and like Adelaide, Mount Panorama is not a place where mistakes go unpunished, in fact it's worse, so expect to see a few safety cars over the weekend.
"It will be tough on the pit crews too, so not making mistakes will give you a good result, and, if we can add good car speed, we should be pretty competitive."

BJR tested at Winton last week and logged a lot of kilometres in search of any advantage to get that tenth of a second extra that makes such a difference over the course of a 250-kilometre race.
"All the teams have been working with these cars for a few years now but there's still room for improvement," Percat said.
"It's like two people making a cake from the same recipe - they'll turn out different.
"We have different drivers and engineers working together and we can still find areas to make the cars handle better and better to drive.
"We were quick at Bathurst in October, so we don't need to make radical changes, but we need to keep moving forward or we'll go backwards as the others are improving all the time too."
The first Supercars practice session is at 12:25pm today.
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